Hand counting, a court fight and a QAnon follower: 3 counties to watch in 2024 election

In county governments across the country, officials who fear elections are vulnerable to fraud have been taking matters into their own hands, lodging protests and investigations.

Many have delayed and voted against certifying elections since former President Donald Trump falsely claimed his 2020 loss was due to voter fraud. In Nevada, a commissioner of a key swing county said she learned information that warranted "further investigation." In Mohave County, Arizona, a commissioner who voted to delay a certification vote said it was a statement of solidarity with other counties that were delaying certification. In Michigan, two members of a county board of canvassers in the Upper Peninsula didn't believe three recall elections all could have had a similar margin.

An official in Colorado breached her own county’s voting machines, and another in Ohio was investigated for a potential attempted breach.

Then there are counties that attempt to replace machine-counting ballots with having humans hand-count their ballots, a practice that studies show is less accurate and timely than using machines.

Some of these counties are in key swing states, or blue states where Vice President Kamala Harris is dependent on electoral votes to win.

The key role of counties

In most states, counties run elections. Boards such as a county commission, a board of elections, or specialized boards may choose the top election official in the county, decide on basic administrative issues, and formally sign off on election results.

States have sued counties, and grand juries have indicted county officials, when they don't certify elections. Officials usually comply with court orders or reverse their votes quickly. But the fight over what counties can do still has the potential to sow chaos and distrust in elections.

“There are just so many layers where people could decide not to follow the rules as written," Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles who runs ElectionLawBlog.org, said.

Here’s a look at three swing-state counties where officials have created controversy over elections, and how they could affect the presidential election.

Spalding County, Georgia

Donald Trump won with about 60% of the votes in 2020 in this rural county an hour’s drive south of Atlanta.

On Oct. 8, three Republican-leaning appointees on the five-member Board of Elections — Ben Johnson, Roy McClain and James Newland — voted to perform a hand-count audit of how many ballots were cast in one federal and one local race. They will choose names out of a hat to decide which elections to hand count, as a way of checking the results against the machine-counted ones.

The nationwide push toward hand-counting among election integrity activists on the right follows debunked rumors that voting machines and tabulation machines were somehow rigged in the 2020 presidential election, such as the debunked claim that Dominion Voting Systems used an algorithm to flip votes from Trump to Biden.

Election experts endorse machine-counting ballots, using scanners similar to those used in standardized tests, because of cost and practicality. “Hand counts can have error rates up to 50 times higher than vote-counting machines,” the nonpartisan Brennan Center for Justice wrote in July, saying that hand-counting is only practical in counties with under 1,000 voters.

The Spalding County Election Board had a 3-2 Democratic-leaning majority during the 2020 election. But Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, and the county’s Republican state house delegation criticized the county’s election supervisor that year for issues with getting “voting systems up and running” in the early morning on Election Day and forcing people to use provisional ballots, which they said are processed differently from other ballots.

The state legislature's Republican majority in 2021 passed a law that specifically changed who appoints certain board members in Spalding County and the eligibility for someone to be the county election supervisor, effectively handing Republicans a 3-2 majority on the board, and terminating the election supervisor.

In 2022, election workers found a fraudulent ballot inserted into a tabulation machine, according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The secretary of state’s office told the newspaper the ballot “may have been created to add a vote for some candidates, or may have been an attempt to cast doubt on the integrity of election systems across the state.”

Johnson, who called the 2020 presidential election “majorly questionable,” is the current board chairman. He also shared Instagram posts that align with the QAnon conspiracy theory — condemning “high-profile pedophiles,” referencing a satanic death cult, and a photoshopped picture of the so-called QAnon shaman.

Efforts to reach Johnson and McClain were unsuccessful. A person who answered a number listed for Newland hung up immediately. USA TODAY did not receive responses to emails sent to the full board, to election Supervisor Kimberly Slaughter, and to a generic email for the elections office. USA TODAY also left a voicemail for the county manager.

“We’ve spent the last two years really trying to work in a cooperative manner so as not to make Spalding County this hot spot for election controversies, but somehow Spalding County continues to be at the forefront of election controversy,” said Dexter Wimbish, a Democrat on the board of elections.

Wimbish said he thinks if there is a big difference between the hand count and the machine count, his colleagues may seek to hand count all the races and do away with voting machines. He said he is "very much concerned" that if the board's reasonable inquiry into results prompts in an investigation, and that investigation is not completed on time, "there will be a vote not to certify the election."

"I think it’s about the possibility of throwing the presidential election into litigation if their candidate of choice is not elected," he said. "I think clearly that’s what it’s designed to do."

Fulton County, Pennsylvania

This rural county of 15,000 in south-central Pennsylvania sits on the border of Maryland and has been described by Reuters as "Trump Country" because it votes overwhelmingly for the former president.

County commissioners, who also serve as the county Board of Elections, have been in a legal battle with the secretary of state's office for years, after they were accused of bringing in a technology company in December 2020 to breach their Dominion voting machines in order to audit the election results.

The secretary of state's office decertified the machines because the company had taken pictures of critical components of the machines, compromising their use in future elections. Fulton County took the state to court challenging the secretary of state's power to decertify the machines.

The county was so adamant about investigating the machines that the county tried to bring in a second company to inspect the equipment, according to court documents. So the state got an order from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to stop the second company from being allowed to inspect.

"Months later — and with no public consideration, official proceedings, or notice to the courts or other parties to this litigation," Fulton County brought in a third company to inspect the machines, the court wrote. The secretary of state's office asked to hold the county in contempt and impose sanctions.

The judge concluded in 2023: “Fulton County and its various attorneys have engaged in a sustained, deliberate pattern of dilatory, obdurate, and vexatious conduct and have acted in bad faith throughout these sanction proceedings.”

Randy Bunch, one of two commissioners who brought the case against the secretary of state's office, was re-elected in 2023 and is currently the chairman of the three-person board. He did not respond to inquiries from USA TODAY. Neither did commissioners Steven Wible or Hervey Hann, who were elected in 2023.

"The department will not hesitate to act if any of the 67 counties of the commonwealth acts in a manner that jeopardizes the safety and security of the votes cast this November by its citizens," wrote Pennsylvania Department of State Press Secretary Matt Heckel in an email. He said the county's actions related to voting systems were "reckless."

Bunch, Wible and Hann will be responsible for certifying the county's results of the presidential election.

Cochise County, Arizona

This red county in the southeastern corner of Arizona has a 2-1 Republican majority on its county governing board and has tussled with Democratic state officials multiple times since 2020 over how they administer elections.

Tom Crosby and Peggy Judd, two Republicans on the Board of Supervisors, are under indictment for conspiracy and interference with an election officer because they did not certify the results of the Nov. 8, 2022 election prior to a state deadline.

Crosby and Judd both supported ordering a hand count of more ballots, on top of a small sample that the state already requires them to do, before certifying the vote. A court later that year ordered the board to certify, and Judd and Democrat Ann English voted to do so, but Crosby did not attend the vote. Democratic state Attorney General Kris Mayes’ office brought the case to a grand jury. The trial starts in January.

Judd declined to comment for this story. Crosby pointed to his public comments in meetings. Meeting minutes from Nov. 18, 2022 show Crosby said he had no reason to think the 2020 election was dishonest but said certification should be delayed until there was more evidence that proved the machines were reliable.

“While he does not know, he suspects that voting machines can be hacked,” the minutes say.

Cochise County Recorder David Stevens, a Republican whose office maintains voter registration records, told USA TODAY he was willing to perform the hand count for the board. “I’m the kind of guy who likes to help,” he said, pointing to his time in the Army and the Boy Scouts.

Stevens declined to say whether President Joe Biden was legitimately elected, instead saying he’s looking forward. He said he expects to accept the results of the upcoming presidential election. “I have no reason not to,” he said. “But I can’t speak to what happens in the future.”

English, the Democratic supervisor, said she doesn’t think her colleagues have considered bringing up hand counting again, and she was hopeful the presidential results would be certified.

“In life, you make mistakes, and that’s where lessons are learned, so I’m hoping that they learned that lesson,” she said.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 3 controversial swing-state counties to watch in 2024 election